Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
Reyna saw suddenly how he had gotten where he was. How he was such an incredible businessman. He had been running a different sort of business for much longer.
“How did you end up going from being a lord to working with Harrington?”
His face was carved out of marble. His onyx eyes were dark gems cut into the hard surface. A deep sorrow suffused him all at once. It enveloped the room, sweeping everything into its orbit.
“My second was killed.”
The way he said it made it perfectly clear that his second-in-command had been incredibly important to him and that loss still shaped him.
“When my second was gone, I wanted to walk away from everything I’d earned and burn the city to the ground. William showed up a couple of months later as I tracked down and killed every person who had been related to the death. He offered an alternative. He offered me the blood type cure.”
“And you accepted it, just like that?”
Beckham laughed harshly. “No. I told him to go fuck himself. He said he knew who had killed my second and that he was able to think more clearly because of this cure. More clearly than I ever had before. If we brought the vampires out of the darkness together, he would help me hunt down the person who had done it and kill them.”
“Did you find out who did it?” she whispered.
“Yes. And he paid dearly for what he had done.” His eyes were unfocused, returning to what had happened that day.
“So, Harrington offered you a new life, and you accepted it.”
“Yes. We orchestrated the financial collapse. Between the four of us, we had enough resources tied up to cripple most countries relatively easily.”
“Four?”
“Harrington recruited two other lords—Roland and Cassandra.”
“Ah,” she said. Roland’s name made her stomach turn. “Cassandra wasn’t a lady?”
“Ask her that and she’ll tear your throat out.”
Reyna tried not to think about the fact that he’d been a part of the financial collapse.
Of all the things, that was the one that hit her strongest. If the economy hadn’t collapsed, her uncle wouldn’t have turned her and her brothers out on the streets.
They might never have ended up in the warehouses. She never would have joined Visage.
“What about the girls?” she asked, forcing the words out. “Penelope said something about…about her being a test?”
“Harrington thought I’d kill her. He thought if I did it would keep her father in line. Her father was trying to revitalize the slums and doing too good of a job.”
“You were preventing him from helping people?”
“The crash keeps people desperate enough to work for us,” he said without emotion. “It did for you.”
Fuck. She felt sick. It was worse, knowing all her fears were real. If the world knew this, they’d hate the vampires so much more than they already did.
“Yes. I helped ruin your life. Only to have you show up at my door and let me ruin it a second time.”
“You might have been a part of it the first time, but you saved me the second time.”
He shook his head. “You still don’t understand.”
“No, I think you don’t understand. You can throw anything at me, Becks.
You could kill mothers and children and puppies.
” She paused and grinned slightly. “Okay, maybe not puppies. But whatever it is you did that you thought was so terrible isn’t going to be enough to turn me away. I see you. I know you.”
“I hunted people,” he spat. “For fun. For sport. I’d find prey that were weak. I looked for them. I tortured them. And I killed them. Like you and Penelope and many, many others.”
She swallowed at this revelation. She had known, but hearing it in his words was still hard. “You’re not going to kill me now.”
He stared at her, blank-faced.
“Beckham, all of this happened before the blood type cure. There’s a reason you and hundreds of vampires just like you changed after the cure. You were an animal, and you couldn’t control yourself.”
His voice was hollow when he said, “I still hate myself.”
“Further proof that you are no longer the animal that you once were.” And she had to believe that. No matter what had happened in his past, that wasn’t him now. What he’d done had been a terrible act by an animal. Not her Beckham. Not Becks.
Still he looked unconvinced.
“You didn’t kill me. You didn’t kill Penelope. Why?”
“The cure,” he said on a sigh. “But also because I picked up photography again. I’d done it as a child long before I was turned. And everything changed when I looked through the lens.”
“That’s why you gave me a camera.”
“Yes. I saw a different perspective, and I wanted you to as well.” He sighed.
“And as for Penelope, she wasn’t any different than the other girls.
She was never different. I simply opened my eyes.
And when I did, she happened to be there.
” He slowly reached out and touched her face.
“It was another year before I found what I was looking for.”
“What’s that?” she whispered.
“You.”
Reyna reached up onto her tiptoes and pressed their lips together. He hesitated, as if he couldn’t believe she would still want to kiss him after those revelations.
“Becks,” she said softly against his lips.
Coaxing him to relax. She didn’t like his past, the things he’d done, or the things he’d had to endure, but he had been a different person when he went through those things.
He was a different man when he was with her.
He’d told her his deep dark secrets, and she still wanted him. She still wanted this.
“Little One,” he said. “I did want to tell you—I can get away for your brother’s wedding.”
She reared back, and a broad smile lit up her face. “Really?”
“If you’ll have me.”
She fell into him, wanting nothing more than this moment. She pushed all her emotions into one blissful kiss. Finally, slowly, he relaxed and kissed her back.